


How Do I

by bandwidthlimit



Category: Rizzoli & Isles
Genre: Case Fic, F/F, Friends to Lovers, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-03
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-01-20 23:54:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 20,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21290255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bandwidthlimit/pseuds/bandwidthlimit
Summary: Maura offers to be whatever Jane needs, no boundaries. Turns out, Jane needs a lot.
Relationships: Maura Isles/Jane Rizzoli
Comments: 110
Kudos: 384





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This work is entirely composed of fiction. All rights regarding Rizzoli & Isles belong to TNT and Tess Gerritsen.

The baseball made a repetitive smack into her hand as she lay on her back, staring unseeingly at the ceiling, tossing it limply into the air and catching it without tracking its movements. Jane barely blinked, barely breathed, just flung the ball into the air over her mattress and caught it with the same hand, the other tucked up behind her head, fingers knotted in her unwashed, tangled hair. She felt the stitching in the leather before it retraced its route, up into the air and back down into her hand.

She wondered if this feeling would ever get better, if it would ever go away. Given the last six months, she doubted it. There was still a gaping hole in her heart that still seemed too frayed and damaged to ever close. 

Barry was a careful driver, he always watched the road, the weather conditions, and paid particular attention to the drivers around him. She used to tease him about dying of old age before they would ever make it to a crime scene, about how her Grandma Regina drove faster and more recklessly than him.

The difference now was that Grandma Regina was still alive, and Barry was not. 

Her phone vibrated next to her on the bed, and she heaved a sigh. It was probably her mother. Or work. Either way, it was not a phone call she wanted to take. The phone buzzed itself into silence.

White and red, the ball went up again and came back down. Next to her, the phone started anew.

Definitely her mother.

Jane rolled over and let the ball drop from her hand. Still vibrating, she picked up her phone and saw Maura’s smiling face on the caller ID. She swiped the green answer button and brought the phone to her ear.

“What took you so long?” Maura sounded insulted, and Jane could practically see the pout she would doubtlessly deny.

“I thought you were my mother,” after a beat, she added, “She’s not with you, is she?”

Maura’s exasperated sigh seemed to echo over the phone line, “Am I not allowed to call you without supervision, Jane?”

Jane cracked a half smile and flopped back onto her bed, feeling how she imagined a sixteen year old girl must feel, gabbing on the phone to her best friend. All she needed now was a loud bubblegum smack and to twirl her hair in her fingers. “Of course not. What’s up, Doc?” She couldn’t resist the urge to sass Maura at least a little, but even to her ears, the crack sounded flat and exhausted.

“What are your plans for next Sunday?” 

“Dinner with Ma, like always. You know that.”

“Perfect. I’ve spoken with your mother -”

“Of course you have.”

“And,” Maura plowed on, ignoring the interruption, “She’s willing to forego your dinner so that we can go to the Red Sox game.” 

Something about the tone in Maura’s voice wasn’t settling well. Jane frowned, “She did, did she?”

“Mmhm!” Maura sounded pleased with herself now, unaware of the trap of Jane’s mood. “So I’ll pick you up at eleven so we can get lunch before the -”

“Why?” The word dropped like a stone, and she heard Maura pause. 

“Why?” She echoed back, and this time, Jane started to understand. 

“You don’t need to canoodle with my mother to get me out of the house, Maura. I’m fine. I get up every day, eat, work, and sleep.”

“Jane, that’s not what I’m trying to do at all. What’s so wrong about a baseball game?” Maura sounded hurt, but Jane knew she had her stuck. There was guilt behind the offense, and Jane opted to just stay silent and let Maura incriminate herself. “Besides,” she finally burst out, “that’s not what that even means! I was not canoodling! Maybe conspiring, but it was just a discussion between friends about someone important to them -”

“Sounds like canoodling.”

Maura let out an exasperated breath, giving up on her correction of Jane’s vocabulary, “Fine, I canoodled. For you. I’m worried about you, Jane. You’re meeting your basic needs, but what are you doing to move on? It’s been months. You said you’d had a breakthrough, but Jane, I don’t think that’s true.”

Sitting up, Jane tried not to groan. “I’m fine, Maura. I don’t need you to take care of me.”

“What if I want to, Jane? You’re my friend, and I can’t just sit by and watch you hurt.”

Her head was starting to pound, and just as she was opening her mouth to protest, the incoming call beep began on her phone. “Maura, I’m fine. I have to go, I’m getting another call.”

She heard Maura pull the phone away from her ear, and at a distance, heard Maura make a defeated sound. “I am, too. I’ll see you at the crime scene, Jane.” The line disconnected without a goodbye, and Jane shook her head and picked up the other line.

“Rizzoli.”

\---- 

It was still a crisp, early April day when she pulled up to the crime scene. Police tape had already been stretched around the apartment entrance, though Jane always wondered if it served much purpose other than drawing more attention to the scene. She pulled her coat a little tighter around her as she nodded at the uniformed officer standing by the door, and she ducked under the tape and into the building.

Inside the air was only slightly less biting, and the lighting was dim, forcing her to squint to see down the hallway. For a moment, she expected Frost to come out of the apartment at the end and beckon her inside, but instead, it was Vince Korsak who stepped out and waved her forward.

“Vic is Jason Brown, 28 year old male, GSW to the head. Looking like an open and shut case, gun was found in the apartment. CSRU already bagged it up. We’re just waiting on the ME’s office.”

“Maura’s on her way,” Jane told him, reaching up and pulling her hair into a messy ponytail at the back of her head. She resisted the urge to wipe her hands on her coat after. When was the last time she’d washed her hair?

“I half expected you to roll in together,” Korsak shrugged as he stepped back into the apartment.

Jane shook her head, eyes sweeping the living room that looked like it belonged to a college aged kid, not a man nearing thirty. “She called me right before this came in.”

Korsak shrugged like it didn’t matter, and she supposed it didn’t. She redirected her attention toward the victim, who was lounging on the couch with his head thrown back against the pillows. If she couldn’t see the blood splatter and the hole in his right temple, she might have assumed he was sleeping. But, his skin had taken on the unmistakable color of flesh without circulation, and there was something awkward about the way his limbs were positioned.

She heard the officer at the front greet someone, and moments later, she heard the sharp click of heels down the hallway. The CSRU workers and uniforms still in the apartment fell silent as Maura entered, their voices hushing as the recognized the presence of the Queen of the Dead. Jane offered Maura as much of a smile as she could muster, knowing how much she hated the reaction her presence often brought to a room. 

Maura was no more the Queen of the Dead than Jane was a Care Bear, but there was nothing to be done about the reputation garnered. The Medical Examiner’s office had always been an institution that demanded respect, and Maura’s innate ability to rattle little known facts off like a walking Wikipedia had set her a step above the rest. Regardless, the moniker was one Maura pretended not to hear and fully disapproved of. 

She had barely knelt down before Jane was hovering at her shoulder, “So, what do you think?”

Jane could practically feel Maura’s suppressed eyeroll, and cracked her a grin when the ME looked up at her with thinly veiled impatience. Obviously their conversation earlier had not yet been forgotten, and Jane’s attempt at banter would get her nowhere. “What I think, Detective, is that we have a well nourished young adult male, between twenty five and thirty years old, with what appears to be a gunshot wound to the right temple. Judging by the entrance wound, I would estimate the caliber to be a .22.”

“That would match the gun CSRU already bagged,” Korsak supplied.

“Where was it found?” Jane asked, glancing around the living room.

“On the floor. Looks like it fell out of his hand after he shot himself,” Korsak gestured toward the victims right hand, which was dangling over the edge of the couch. 

“We can’t assume that,” Maura interjected, looking around the apartment. “We won’t know any more until we -”

“Get him back to the lab.” Jane finished with her. She stifled a smile of success when Maura gave her an acquiescing nod. “Guess we’ll see you there, Maur.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story was born of my frustrations with how the show handled Jane's grief regarding Barry. It was a season I watched shortly after losing my best friend this March and I just don't feel they covered the true devastation of what it's like to lose someone you see every single day.
> 
> That said, Katie, this one's for you. I miss you every day.


	2. Chapter 2

Falling into the routine of work was a balm to Maura’s nerves. She wasn’t sure why she’d been surprised to meet resistance from Jane. She should have expected it, knowing how stubborn Jane was about, well, everything. It was one of her most endearing and most frustrating traits.

Even as she changed out of her day clothes and into the black scrubs of her trade, her mind was occupied with thoughts of Jane. They were ever intrusive, and they were growing increasingly grim. 

The last six months she had watched Jane simply go through the motions of her life. Jane hadn’t been wrong, she got up, came to work, and perfunctorily performed her duties. But Maura could see that her heart wasn’t in it, and she suspected that Jane was dragging herself from her bed every morning. Of course, she had no concrete proof, but she had noticed a lack of basic personal hygiene and certainly the absence of any effort at make up.

She worried what the long term consequences would be if she couldn’t help Jane out of this rut she had found herself in. 

Maura stepped into the morgue and glanced toward the body that had not been there when she had gone in to change. Something about the crime scene had seemed off, somehow, but she hadn’t been able to put her finger on it. She had been distracted by her earlier phone call with Jane, and frankly found Jane’s attempt to brush her concern away infuriating.

Did she need an ulterior motive to be concerned about her best friend? More importantly, did her motives have to come from Angela? Did Jane think so little of her that she would doubt that Maura truly cared, and was concerned for her well being?

She shook the thoughts off. More likely, Jane was as entrapped in her own thoughts as Maura currently was in hers. 

Forcing herself to refocus on the case at hand, she approached the body on her table. 

\----

“Simple suicide, I’m telling you,” Korsak was hunched over his desk, reading glasses perched low on his nose. “There were no signs of forced entry, nothing disturbed in the apartment, nothing to indicate foul play. All we’re waiting on is the sign off from downstairs and then we can all pack it in for the day.”

Jane shook her head and leaned back in her chair, “I don’t know. My gut is telling me it isn’t that easy. Who made the call?”

“Someone called in a welfare check. Uh, Samantha Redford, I think the report said. 26, lives out in West Roxbury.”

“Anybody call and talk to her yet?”

“Not yet, I was thinking of putting Frankie on it. You want to volunteer?”

Jane weighed the options. She could go down and check on the autopsy, see if anything interesting had come to light. Or, she could go speak to a possibly grieving mid twenty something. 

She thought of Maura, and her Red Sox game with strings.

“I’ll go. Have Frankie do a little digging and see how Samantha knows James. See if he can’t text me any details before I make it there.” She pushed herself up and out of her seat, sparing a glance at the blue Chogokin toy still standing tall on the desk next to hers. 

If Korsak saw her look linger, he said nothing of it, just grunted his acknowledgement and picked up his phone, presumably to call Frankie. Jane busied herself with her coat and keys, heading straight for the elevator. 

Once inside, she hesitated to select a floor. 

She jammed her thumb into the basement button and tried hard not to think about it as the elevator brought her down. The ding that signaled her arrival seemed too loud, and as the doors opened, she shoved her hands deep into her pockets and hunched her shoulders, like she was heading out into bitter winter cold rather than the climate controlled cool of the morgue. 

Through the windows, she saw Maura with her hair pulled back, bent over the body of their GSW victim from that morning. She hadn’t looked up yet, so it left Jane free to observe, and she found her eyes lingering on the way Maura’s expression wrinkled when she noticed something odd, the way her hands paused.

It took her a moment to realize what Maura was looking at. She had the victims left hand in both of hers, and she was peering at the fingers. She set it down and moved to the other hand, giving it the same scrutiny. 

Jane finally stepped through the doors, and Maura looked up at her. The focused expression changed to a tentative smile, like she wasn’t sure if Jane would accept it or not.

“Hi,” Jane managed, feeling like a Class A idiot. Why had she come down here in the first place?

“Hi,” Maura returned, and as if she sensed Jane’s sense of loss, she took charge of the conversation. “I was just about to call you. I noticed something interesting about our victims fingers.”

“Specifically his fingers?” Jane asked, raising an eyebrow and glancing over the rest of the body. She noticed the Y incision already cleanly closed, and the drape was fresh, free of any autopsy stains. 

“Yes, everything else was remarkably normal. As you can see, he has a gunshot wound to his right temple - x-rays confirmed the track of the bullet, I have the round sent out to ballistics - and the gun was found near his right hand.”

“Uh huh,” Jane shifted her weight on her feet, rocking front to back, “What was so interesting? So far this sounds like Korsak is right, an open and shut. Suicide.”

“I can’t rule it a suicide, Jane. This is a suspicious death. James has no gunshot residue on his fingers, on either hand. Additionally, he has indicators of being left handed. I noticed it in his apartment, everything positioned to be usable on the left side. If you look here,” Maura picked up the victims left hand again, pointing out his index finger and thumb, “you can see callouses from use of everything from pencils and scissors to keys or tools.”

“Hold on - so someone broke into his apartment, shot him from the right side, staged him to look like a suicide, and left the gun to seal the deal.” She was suddenly filled with the intense need to hug Maura, but resisted, keeping herself firmly on the other side of the table. “Can you let Korsak know? I’m headed out to speak with the person who called in the welfare check. Sounds like it may be more interesting than I was expecting.”

“Of course. And, Jane, about our conversation earlier -”

“It’s fine, Maura. I’m fine.” Jane waved her off, trying hard for nonchalance. “Let’s go to the game, but you’re buying me garlic fries.”

The smile that split Maura’s face was worth Jane’s sense of dread. As much as she loved the Red Sox, she knew each inning would be a new opportunity for Maura - and through Maura, her mother, to try to convince her she needed help. 

Which was ridiculous, of course. She was fine, she was coping fine, her life was fine. 

She just needed a shower. 

“Of course I will. I’ll even add in a hot dog.” Maura’s voice brought her back to reality, and Jane managed a smile.

“You got a deal. I’ll see you later.” Jane gave a brief wave and retreated back to the elevator, reminding herself again that it was just a baseball game and that even if there were emotional hurdles to jump through each inning, it was worth it if it would make Maura feel better.

\----

Alone in her car, Jane felt her shoulders sag. It was after noon and she couldn’t remember what she’d last eaten, apart from a thick cup of coffee poured from the break room. She wasn’t sure if it was todays or not, but it had been available and she’d be damned if she was stuck making the coffee again. Besides, if Frankie was that tired of chewing his coffee, maybe he should step up and make a pot here and there. 

She was exhausted, even with coffee on board. It felt like every day she was chasing her own tail, jumping at shadows that weren’t even there. She was constantly on edge, waiting for someone to make a passing comment, or worse, say his name right to her face. 

There had not been a single day that she had not thought about Barry Frost, and to have any attention brought to that fact made her furious. She couldn’t be the only one who missed him, could not possibly be the only person still hearing his voice, his jokes, in her memory.

And yet, it was like everyone else had moved on. Put Frost in a neat little box after the service and gone on with their day. It was true that funerals were for the living, a neat little end to someone's life.

For Jane, it was a smack in the face. How could there be a neat end, a closed chapter, on someone as bright and still tangible as Barry Frost?

Two months ago, Cavanaugh had approached her about seeing the department shrink. She had not so politely shut him down, and he hadn’t brought it up since. No, the next time she heard those words, she expected to hear them from someone much closer to home. 

She had reached Samantha Redford’s address without realizing it, throwing the vehicle into park with a little more force than necessary. She was still angry, she realized, furious that Frost was not here with her, where he should be. Instead, she was about to face a possible suspect by herself, without his calming presence behind her.

He had softened her rough edges, placated little old ladies and soothed the hurt feelings she inevitably left in her path. She asked the questions that needed asking, but it didn’t always endear the recipient to her.

Hopefully, she wouldn’t need anyone to soothe hurt feelings in her path today. 

The car door closed forcefully behind her, and Jane checked her side arm out of habit. It was a comforting presence at her hip, and the action allowed her to refocus on the case. She was here to question a possible suspect, but more importantly, she was here to represent Boston PD and offer her condolences to who she had to assume was a friend of the deceased.

Long strides brought her across the street to the front door of a small, well maintained home. It had a small garden, like most houses in Boston, but no true yard to speak of. The house was painted a friendly pale green, a far cry from the sedate browns and grays of its neighbors. She reached out and rang the bell, hands left loose at her sides, ready to reach for her badge when it was needed.

Scrambling sounded behind the door, a few barks, and someone admonishing a clearly unashamed dog. The door swung open and a young face appeared, slightly lower than eye level. As the door opened more, it became clear that the woman in front of her was struggling with a large dog, one who was heaving forward to get a whiff of Jane. Instantly, her nose started to itch, but Jane dropped to a low crouch regardless and held her hand out for the mutt.

“Can I help you?” The woman, now above her, asked gruffly.

“Yes, sorry,” Jane offered her a wide smile, hoping it reached her eyes. Her left hand was still outstretched to the dog, who was now happily snuffling at her fingers, with her right, she freed her badge and offered it for viewing to the woman before her. “I’m Detective Jane Rizzoli, Boston Homicide. I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

“Homicide?” The womans brow furrowed, and her grip on the dogs collar loosened. He took advantage of his owners distraction and lurched forward, shoving his large blocky head into Jane’s hand. “Dammit, Dane!” She swore, reaching again for his collar, “Back! Don’t make me put you in your kennel!”

“Oh, he’s fine,” Jane soothed, rising to her full height. Dane was still snuffling at her, calm and friendly. Not quite the guard dog, she noted. “Are you Samantha Redford?” 

“Yes, but I don’t understand why a homicide detective is asking.” Her voice was hard and defensive. If she was trying to make Jane feel unwelcome, she was doing a hell of a job.

“Do you mind if I come in? I have a few questions I’d like to ask you about Jason Brown. I’d prefer not to ask them on the street.” Again, she flashed a smile that she didn’t feel, and watched closely as Samantha’s already closed off expression hardened further.

“If it’s all the same to you, I’ll answer your questions here. Dane!” Samantha glowered down at the dog, “Sit!” He harrumphed into a slouching sit, head drooped but still looking up, eyeing Jane in a much more welcoming fashion than his master.

Samantha stepped out and shut the door behind her, and Jane was forced to take a step back and make space on the small stoop.

“So what about Jason?” She asked, though it sounded less like a question and more like a demand. 

“I’m sorry to inform you, Jason Brown was found deceased inside his residence at 8:52 this morning.” Samantha’s face remained unmoved, and Jane began to wonder if she shouldn’t have brought Frankie with her. “I understand you called in a welfare check on Mr. Brown last night.”

“I did.” This was going nowhere, fast.

“Can you explain to me the events that led up to that phone call?”

“It’s personal. Was Jason murdered?”

“It’s policy that we look into every unattended death,” Jane hedged, glancing down at Dane who let out a baleful whine.

“Well, if he was, he fucking deserved it.” Samantha practically spat out the words, and Jane couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow. “You know what,” Samantha added, glancing at the neighboring houses, “Come in. I could use a drink, and it looks like you could, too.”

Jane opened her mouth to protest, but Samantha had already turned to open the door. Dane lumbered himself inside first, and Jane was left with little option but to follow her into the friendly green house.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was going to aim for weekly updates, but realistically, I can't sit on it for that long, so I'll update as I go.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has a brief description of violence against women.

Inside the house, Jane found herself shuffled onto a stool at the kitchen island. It was littered with mail and general detritus. No neat freak herself, she still surreptitiously swept aside a few crumbs and an envelope, and suppressed a smile at the thought of Maura in this kitchen. She imagined either hives, or a flurry of cleaning.

Samantha busied herself at the coffee pot, and Jane did not miss the splash of whiskey she threw into one cup. She made sure to keep a close eye on which cup was handed to her, and thanked Samantha politely as the other woman took a seat in a stool across the counter. 

“So,” Samantha started, staring down at her spiked coffee and not at Jane. “I suppose you want me to tell you about Jason.”

Jane nodded in agreement, studying Samantha, who was pointedly not looking at her. She was still so young, no lines marring her features that Jane could see. She’d cut her dark hair short, cropped close to her head, and the strands were sticking out every which way, as though Samantha had been running her hands through it frequently. Dark circles darkened the skin under her eyes, and there was a fine tremor to her hands as she gripped her coffee like it was the only thing keeping her in her seat.

“Jason Brown is a pig.” Samantha started, and she finally looked up at Jane. “I meant what I said, if he was murdered, he had it coming to him.”

“Why do you say that?” Jane pressed gently, taking a tentative sip of her coffee. She was relieved to taste plain old Folgers, no hint of whiskey in the cup.

“He had a bad habit of letting his hands wander. And not just his hands, if you get what I mean. I know it wasn’t just us, either. I’ve heard whispers about other women, but I don’t know that any have come forward.”

Jane put her cup down carefully on the counter, “Us?”

“My girlfriend, Julie. She’s the reason I made the call last night. She and Jason grew up together, she always turned a blind eye for him. Until he decided he had to have a taste of her.” Samantha’s grip tightened impossibly further on her mug. “He never could accept that Julie wasn’t into him, that she liked women. He kept saying she just hadn’t found the right dick yet.”

The phrase made Jane’s stomach turn. It was needlessly crass, and the implication was sickening. “I understand how that can make him a tasteless person,” She said carefully, “But it’s still a stretch to say he deserved to die.”

“Jason assaulted Julie over a month ago. He’d invited her over for dinner, and she went, ‘cause they’ve always been friends, you know? I asked her not to go, I’ve never liked the guy. But, I never wanted to be that girl who told her partner who she could and couldn’t talk to, right? Seems wrong to me. So, I sucked it up and she left, and a few hours later my phone blows up. She was crying, could barely get a word out, and I went and picked her up.”

Samantha’s words were pouring out of her now, like she’d been holding them in for so long that once she started, she couldn’t stop them. “When I got there, Julie was covered with bruises. Her clothes were all messed up, she had a hand print on her face where he’d - he’d held her down.” Her voice caught, and Jane felt an echoing stab in her heart. 

This was not at all how she’d expected her day to go.

“Did Julie report it?” 

“I made her. She didn’t want to. But after all the rumors about him… I made her. I didn’t protect her enough before, and I won’t make that mistake again.” Samantha was looking down at her coffee again, seeming to speak mostly to herself. 

Jane frowned, and fought the urge to rub her forehead. Her headache from earlier had not abated, and she was increasingly aware of the weight in her chest. Samantha’s obvious pain only seemed to add to hers, and she made the obvious choice and shoved her own grief deeper in an effort to relieve someone else’s. 

“That was the right thing to do, Samantha. Can you tell me how you went from filing a police report against Mr. Brown to calling in a welfare check?” She couldn’t use his first name in light of the information she had just received. It would all need confirmation, but seeing the lost look in the eyes of the woman before her, she trusted in her gut that Samantha was telling her the truth.

“Call me Sam,” she corrected, taking a deep breath to steel herself. “I may as well tell you, since you’ll find out anyhow. Julie is pregnant. She told Jason last week, and he called her last night, wanted her to come over again. To talk about the baby. She said he sounded drunk, and she didn’t want to see him. He called and left her a couple of messages, he sounded crazy, just getting more and more pissed that she wouldn’t come over. I think she still has them, it was only yesterday....”

“Where is Julie now?” 

“Work. She works the early shift at the gym, she should be getting home soon.”

“I’ll need to get those messages on file, Sam.”

Sam nodded, and took another large swallow of her coffee. “Sure, sure. I’ll shoot her a text, hold on.”

Jane drank some of her own coffee, and the liquid churned in her otherwise empty stomach. She’d need to grab lunch on the way back to the precinct, and it sounded like she’d have plenty to report when she made it there. Her own phone buzzed in her pocket, and she glanced down at it after confirming that Sam was engrossed in her own message.

_Got something real interesting for you when you get back._ From Korsak. Doubtlessly he had found the police report against their vic.

She looked up to see Sam watching her, and tucked her phone back into her pocket.

“Julie says she’ll be home in about an hour.”

Inwardly, Jane frowned. An hour was longer than she wanted to linger. “I’ll need to have you both come in for a statement, why don’t you have her come down to the precinct and we can take care of it there.”

Sam nodded absently, and Jane paused. There was more to tell, she still hadn’t revealed why she’d made the welfare check, and though her gut told her Sam hadn’t harmed anyone, she needed it confirmed. 

“There’s more,” Sam finally said, almost a whisper. “I know it doesn’t look good for me, but I swear, I never touched the guy.”

Jane pulled in a deep breath, and said as calmly as she could, “Tell me.”

“I was at Jason’s apartment last night. I went over there to tell him to leave us alone, that the baby would never be a part of his life and that he needed to stop bothering Julie. That he’d done enough. He swung at me, he was drunk and unsteady and he fell onto his couch. He was alive when I left, I swear, and when I left I called in the welfare check. We haven’t heard much back after filing the report, and I thought maybe if he was acting crazy when the cops showed up, things might move faster. But, my prints are in that apartment, but I didn’t hurt that asshole.”

Jane gave in to the urge to rub at her forehead, letting out a sigh. “I’m going to need you to come with me.”

Sam nodded again, the movement mechanical. She down the last of the coffee and left her cup on the counter. Jane echoed her movements, but moved to put the mug in the sink. Dane clicked his way into the kitchen and nosed at her, before turning and shoving his head into Sam’s lap.

“Come on, buddy. Kennel up.”

The dog huffed and led the way out of the kitchen, and Jane wondered how much more this day would throw at her. 

\----

“It turns out the police report Redford and her girlfriend had filed was processed and has been waiting for DNA,” Korsak flopped the file down on her desk as he went by, “So far her story checks out. Her prints are in the apartment, but so far only on the front door and a full handprint on the coffee table.”

“What about rushing the DNA results, now that we have his body to compare to?”

“Should be doable. I’m going to run his DNA against other open cases, since it sounds like this wasn’t his first rodeo.”

Jane groaned and let her head fall into her hands. It was only three o’clock and she was ready to pack it in for the day. She could practically hear her bed calling her name, though she reminded herself she would need to detour to the shower first. Dinner, too, ought to be on her list of things to do. She would hate to hear the lecture from Maura if it was discovered all she’d eaten today were a few stale crackers and coffee.

At least she managed to escape the whiskey.

“What’ve we got on the gun?” She asked, voice muffled.

Korsak sighed from his desk, “So far, nothing. Your typical scrub on the serial numbers. Ballistics came back positive on the bullet Maura dug out of the guys head, and it doesn’t look like this gun is tied to any open cases. Brown didn’t have anything registered under his name, but we can’t rule out yet that it wasn’t his.”

“A .22 seems a little light for a guy like him.”

“Maybe he couldn’t handle a little kick back.”

Jane scoffed and tried not to think about how many other places in his life Jason Brown couldn’t handle a little struggle. She wondered how many other women he’d assaulted. After listening to Julie Walsh’s statement, she wondered, too, how he had managed to keep her so close to him. Julie didn’t appear to have any drug dependencies, in fact, the only red flag she’d seen there was Sam’s propensity to dump whiskey into her coffee.

Though, what room did she have to throw stones, when she was relying on oblivion via beer too many nights a week? The more she thought about it, the more she understood. Her own reality was a need to cope with reality, not adjust her entire life upside down to maintain a relationship and prepare to raise a child. A child that not only had she not asked for, but was veritably forced upon her.

She wondered why Sam didn’t just leave. She thought of Sam’s silent support in the conference room while Julie told her story. She had simply sat next to her, spine straight, her hand resting on Julie’s upper back. Whenever Julie slowed, she would take her hand and hold it until she was ready. Not once had her eyes strayed from her face, and when it was over, she had enveloped Julie into an embrace that had left her room to pull back if necessary. Always safe, always protective.

A woman in love was what she’d seen in that conference room. She was willing to bet it hadn’t crossed Sam’s mind for one second that this was not her cross to bear.

A hand on her own back made her jump, and she swore as she turned and saw Maura’s face, concerned clearly etched across her features. “Are you alright?”

Jane raised her eyebrows, squishing down the urge to respond with sarcasm. “Sure,” she smiled, and knew it didn’t warm her features, “Just tired, that’s all.” She glanced toward Korsak’s desk to see if he was going to help her out at all, and found his chair empty. How long had she been stewing in her own thoughts?

Maura looked unconvinced, “You look pale. Have you eaten anything green today?”

“Hard to say,” Jane shrugged. “There may have been some green fuzz on the coffee this morning.”

The ME’s nose wrinkled in distaste, “That’s not funny,” she admonished. “Come on, we’re going to dinner.” She reached down and hooked her arm under Jane’s and hauled her precariously up to her feet. Jane was always impressed when Maura made any show of strength, especially wearing four inch heels. “But first,” Maura continued, sizing Jane up from the corner of her eye, “You are going home to freshen up.”

“What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?” Jane asked defensively, suddenly all too aware that her hair was greasy and she couldn’t remember if she’d put deodorant on this morning. She knew she had at least brushed her teeth, but with the amount of coffee she had consumed, it wouldn’t have mattered if she hadn’t.

“It looks like you dug it out of the bottom of your hamper. Come on. Home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stay tuned for some emotional unpacking.


	4. Chapter 4

Home turned out to be Maura’s home, which Jane didn’t mind in the slightest. Maura’s house was warm and welcoming compared to the hurricane that her condo currently resembled. Even better, the water pressure in Maura’s guest shower was a significant improvement over drip of her own, and though it had taken a force of nature to get her into it, now that she was in, she didn’t want to come out.

She could hear Maura bustling around in the guest bedroom, close by in case she needed her. Maura hadn’t said as much, but Jane knew what she was doing, and while she’d never admit it out loud, she appreciated the gesture. She knew that once she turned the shower off, she would be in for a conversation she did not want to have. Once Maura was truly worried, there would be no shaking her off until her concerns were addressed. 

With a resigned sigh, Jane cut the water and stepped out. She reached for the plush towel Maura had hung for her and started at her hair, before making quick work of drying the rest of her body. Wrapping it tight around herself, she moved into the guest room, where Maura was perched cross legged on the bed, phone in hand. She looked up from the screen and greeted Jane with a smile, and gestured to the clothes she’d set at the foot of the mattress.

“You left these last time you were here. I assumed you’d be more comfortable in your clothes than mine.” 

Jane smiled her appreciation, and she briefly considered asking Maura to leave so she could change. She shrugged off the concern. Maura was all about exploring her sexuality and going with the flow of what felt good, but she knew that Maura would never put her in a position she was uncomfortable in. It was a trust Jane had in very few people, and less so with her current caseload.

She simply turned her back to Maura and struggled into her underwear from earlier, and put on the clothes Maura had supplied.

“Do you feel a little better?” Maura asked, genuinely concerned.

“Do I look any better?” Jane countered, the bite of her sarcasm only softened by the exhaustion she couldn’t keep out of her tone.

“You don’t want me to actually answer that,” Maura said wisely, and slipped off the bed. “Come with me. I ordered pizza while you were showering.”

Jane groaned, “Not mushroom, Maur. Not again.”

“Only half! And you don’t have to eat any.”

“I wouldn’t if you didn’t eat all the pepperoni,” Jane groused, following Maura into the kitchen. She flopped down onto a stool at the counter, an uncanny echo of her morning. 

Maura ignored Jane’s attempt to goad her and loaded herself a plate of one slice of mushroom and one slice of pepperoni. She raised an eyebrow in challenge at Jane, and settled back onto her stool. The silence that fell between them was comfortable, and Maura took some comfort in knowing that Jane had eaten at least one meal today. If she had to bear witness to each one to make sure the detective ate, that was something she was willing to do.

She let Jane make it through her first serving before she broached the conversation, “Jane, I’m worried about you.” Jane made a strangled sound around the pizza in her mouth, and Maura correctly interpreted as protest, “Luckily for you, I don’t need your permission to be concerned.”

“I’m fine, Maura,” Jane said for the thousandth time, “I just haven’t been sleeping well, and our case load has been insane.”

“This is your first case in almost a week. You’ve been complaining about nothing but desk work this month. I know this is not the easiest case you’ve worked, Jane, but it has no bearing on your current state.”

“What do you know about my current state?” Jane challenged, dark eyes narrowed.

“I know that you’re not sleeping, you’re not eating, your hair this morning looked as if you haven’t washed it in a week. Jane, have you processed your feelings at all? Have you considered taking the Lieutenant up on his offer of paid counseling?”

“I don’t need it,” Jane pushed away her plate, suddenly not hungry. “I’m processing just fine. Haven’t thought about it in weeks, in fact.”

“Then why can no one say his name around you?” Maura’s eyes never left her face, and Jane worried about how much she was giving away. It wouldn’t be fair to lay this at Maura’s feet. She had so much of her own to contend with, she didn’t need Jane’s pain on top of it. “Why can’t you admit this is eating you up inside?”

“I’m fine, Maur.” Her protest was weak, and Maura reached out to put a hand on Jane’s arm. Her vision began to swim, and she brusquely rubbed her hand across her eyes. She was surprised to feel it come away wet. “I don’t need you to psychoanalyze me tonight.”

Maura gave her a sad smile and slipped off her stool, enclosing both arms around her in a tight embrace. “That’s not what I’m trying to do at all.”

Jane sagged against her, failing to keep up her pretense. “Then what are you trying to do?” Her voice was muffled against Maura’s shoulder, eyes squeezed shut against tears she refused to shed.

“Be here for you, however you need it.”

Jane tried to ignore the tightness in her throat, her eyes still shut tight. When she tried to open her mouth to respond, all that came out was a choked sob, and in response, she buried her face deeper into Maura’s shirt. She felt Maura’s arms tighten around her and felt a brief flash of guilt at how much comfort she took from the gesture. Maura felt like home.

They stayed like that for what felt like hours, and when Jane finally felt like she had her tears under control, she pulled back and glanced up at Maura sheepishly. “You’re never going to believe me when I say I’m fine ever again, are you?”

Maura laughed, the sound almost relieved. “Not a chance.”

Later, no words were exchanged as they were settled on the couch in front of a documentary that Jane hadn’t bothered complaining about. They were both propped up on the arms of the couch, legs sharing space on the center cushion. It was a comfortable silence, one they had shared a hundred times before. Jane wondered how their friendship mirrored others. She could not remember a single friendship that had been as open as her friendship with Maura. She certainly could not imagine sitting like this with anyone else.

A brief image of trying to squish onto a couch with Korsak flashed through her mind. She stifled a snort. Definitely not.

She glanced at Maura again, only to find herself being studied by warm hazel eyes. She raised her eyebrows in a silent, “what?” 

Maura shook her head, and looked down at her hands in her lap. She seemed to be weighing her options, and Jane hoped she would err on the side of not ruining this perfect moment. They were hard to come by these days. She watched as Maura opened and shut her mouth once, then twice, and was glad when the doctor opted to keep it closed. She didn’t have it in her to field another round of, ‘you’re not processing your grief, Jane.’

Instead, she was surprised when Maura shifted around on the couch to lay against her, her back to Jane’s side. It was a natural movement to drop her arm around Maura’s shoulders, and she took comfort in the warmth and solidity of Maura against her. 

Neither of them heard the side door open, and neither of them saw Angela step inside, and then right back out. 

A smile warmed Angela’s face. She hadn’t seen either one of them that at peace in months. If they could find each other through all of this, then she had faith it would all work out in the end. 

\----

“All I’m saying is that a .22 is a small gun,” Frankie defended, hands up in front of himself as if to hold Jane back.

“And what I’m telling you is that just because the weapon was a .22 does not make Samantha Redford our primary suspect,” Jane growled at him. 

Frankie made a face, as if he knew that what he had to say next would be like pouring gasoline onto a fire, “Are you sure that you don’t want to exclude Samantha as a suspect because you like her?”

Her spine snapped straight and she turned slowly to stare Frankie down, her eyes narrowed. She took a step toward him and he instinctively stepped back, his legs smacking into Korsak’s desk. “What are you trying to say, Frankie?”

“N-nothing.” He shook his head, hands still up, “Just, we don’t have a better suspect right now. She has motive, she admitted to being in Brown’s apartment already, we have her prints at the scene. Maybe she called in a welfare check out of guilt.”

“Or maybe,” Jane practically snarled, “She called in the welfare check to give her partner some peace of mind.”

“Sure, Jane. But time of death is well within the window of time that she said she was in that apartment, and if I were in her position… you bet I’d want to kill the guy that assaulted my girlfriend, you know?”

Jane sighed, her anger draining from her. Flopping down into her chair, she turned to face Korsak. “What did we get on the gun again?” It pained her that she couldn’t remember from the last time she’d asked, but lack of sleep was starting to get to her. 

“No prints,” he shrugged, “It was wiped clean.”

“We did get something else interesting,” Frankie brandished a file at her, hoping to redeem himself. “Brown’s DNA was matched to three other open assault cases. They range back a few years, but it looked like other than assaulting women, he kept his nose pretty clean. We didn’t have any DNA to compare to until someone shot him.”

“Remind me again why there was never a DNA match to the assault charge from Julie?”

“Looks like Brown refused to give any DNA,” Frankie’s mouth twisted in distaste, “Not sure why it was never pushed, but I guess we’ve got it now.”

“Did you have any luck pulling up any of his school records?” Korsak changed the subject, “Didn’t Miss Walsh say he’d had a few accusations while they were in high school?”

Jane nodded, “Yeah, couple suspensions, accusations of peeping, a few isolated incidents of being too close to female students. His juvenile records are sealed, so if anyone went further than a few school complaints, I can’t see them.”

Korsak pulled his glasses off his nose rather than looking over them at her. “Why don’t you and Frankie go have another chat with Julie and see what you can get out of her about Brown’s record. That might give us a little more to go on.”

Frankie cast a side glance at Jane, then at Korsak. He widened his eyes, practically pleading not to be left alone with her.

Jane smiled at him like a shark. “Let’s go.”

\----

The car ride was tense and silent. Frankie seemed to have something he wanted to say, and Jane provided the silence for him to say it. He’d open his mouth every few minutes, look at her, and snap it shut again. Jane flexed her finger on the steering wheel, and the next time she heard Frankie pop his lips open, she turned to look at him.

“Spit it out, Frankie.”

His eyes widened, caught. “I just… you seem better today.”

“Better than what?”

He swallowed hard, “Uh, than before?”

“I’m fine, Frankie. Tell Ma to keep her nose out of it.”

“Hey! I’m allowed to be concerned about you, too! I’m your brother.”

“Sure. But were you?” Jane raised an eyebrow at him, doubtful.

Frankie sighed, “Well, no. You said you were fine. I wanted to believe you.”

“Wish you had,” she muttered, then added, “I am fine. I don’t need Ma planting thoughts in your head, or putting Maura up to trying to get me out of the house.”

“Yeah, but… I don’t know, Jane. I miss him, too, you know?” Frankie’s voice was small, and she was suddenly reminded of the ten year old boy he’d once been. 

She shot him a sad smile, “I really do.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I made a slight edit to chapter one to the canoodling paragraph. Hope you enjoy this chapter, updates may start to space out this week.


	5. Chapter 5

Julie Walsh was a small woman, and she seemed dwarfed by towering stands of a variety of protein bars and shakes. She stood behind the counter at the gym, an inquisitive look on her face and Jane and Frankie approached her.

“Detectives,” She greeted, weariness in her voice. “What can I do for you?”

“We had some follow up questions for you regarding Jason Brown.”

She had to have expected it, but even still, Julie’s face darkened. “I told you everything yesterday.”

Jane offered a comforting smile, but it was Frankie who stepped in. “Thank you for your statement yesterday. I’m sure that wasn’t an easy thing to relive.” He glanced at Jane and plowed ahead, “We wanted to speak with you about his adolescence. We received some information that has led us to believe that you may not have been the only person he might have -”

“Let me take you into the office,” Julie interrupted, her eyes glancing around. Jane noticed her hands dropped protectively to her abdomen, and she ignored the pang of regret for the woman in front of her.

How hard must it be to be bearing the child of a man who had assaulted you? 

She and Frankie followed Julie toward the manager’s office. The manager was a large, dour looking man who begrudgingly gave up his desk to cover the front. He gave Julie a long, stern look, and she promised him it wouldn’t be long.

Julie sat carefully down into one of the plastic chairs in the room, one hand still on her stomach. “What did you want to know?”

Jane tried to find a delicate way to approach her questioning, “While you were in school together, were there ever any reports of Jason assaulting any classmates?”

The young woman flinched at her choice of words, and looked away from them. “Jason was always the kid in the corner, you know? He was the weird kid, no one liked to be around him.”

“But you did,” Frankie pointed out.

“Not really,” Julie admitted, “But my family had just moved here, and Jason was nice to me. I guess I remember him getting in trouble a few times. Girls used to accuse him of following them, taking pictures, I think. Jason never did anything like that to me until Sam and I got together.”

“Then what happened, Julie?”

Julie sighed, her whole body seemed to sag. “He told me that he’d been in love with me for years. He used to say things about how he could ‘straighten me out,’ that if I’d ever given him a chance I wouldn’t want to date girls.”

There was a long pause where Julie said nothing, and Jane and Frankie exchanged glances. Finally, she started again, “Obviously I didn’t take him seriously. Maybe I should have, and then none of this would have happened.”

“Don’t do that, Julie,” Jane interrupted, her voice soft. “None of this was your fault. What Jason did to you is unforgivable, and if he were still alive, I would arrest him in a heartbeat.”

Julie let out a wet laugh, “But he’s dead, now. At least I don’t have to worry about custody. I just never thought he would do that. He’d always been kind of a touchy guy, but he mostly listened when I pushed him away, you know?”

They were getting nowhere with this, and both Frankie and Jane knew that continuing the line of questioning would only upset her more. It was time to step back.

“Julie,” Jane reached out and placed a hand on the younger woman’s shoulder. She looked up, eyes glistening, “Do you want me to call someone for you? I don’t think you should be alone right now.”

She felt Frankie’s eyes boring into the back of her head, and she willed him to keep his thoughts to himself. She could almost feel his “Take your own advice, Jane!” in the air.

“No, no… I’m okay. I need to get back to work.”

Jane wondered if this feeling of disbelief was what everyone felt when she told them the same thing. “Okay,” She relented, reluctant. “If you can think of anyone who would have wanted to hurt Jason, please don’t hesitate to call.”

The manager glared at them on their way out, and Frankie let out a frustrated sigh once the gym doors had closed behind them. “Well that got us absolutely nowhere.”

“It got us a little,” Jane countered. “We know he’s been a creep for at least ten years.”

Frankie let out a bitter laugh, “I don’t think that helps.”

Jane shrugged, leading the way back to the car. “Sure it does. Means lots of people would have a motive to want him dead. I think we need to take a closer look at Brown’s past. Maybe he had a couple favorites to peep on, took it too far, and one of them shot him.”

\----

“How was dinner last night?” 

Maura glanced up from the medical journal she was browsing straight into the knowing brown eyes of Angela Rizzoli. “I’m sorry?” 

“Dinner. With Jane.” Angela’s eyebrows raised. If Maura thought she could pull one over on her, she was sorely mistaken.

“Oh. It was fine.”

“‘Oh, it’s fine,’ ‘Ma, I’m fine,’” Angela mimicked, rolling her eyes, “If everything is so fine, why does no one want to talk about it?”

Maura resisted the urge to remind her that it was none of her business. That was something Jane would do, and no matter how tempting, Maura would not cross that line with her best friends mother. “It was just pizza, Angela. Nothing earth shattering.”

“Looked like you two were pretty cozy on the couch last night.”

“Were you spying on us?” Maura asked delicately, one eyebrow raised in challenge. 

Angela brushed her off, “Why would I need to spy on you? I was just coming in for the kettle and happened to see the both of you on the couch.”

“Mm. How was your tea last night?” She felt a small smile of triumph curl her lips when Angela spluttered.

“I didn’t make any,” she finally admitted, “I didn’t want to disturb you.”

“I hate to disappoint you, Angela, but there was nothing to disturb. We had pizza, watched a documentary, and Jane went home. Presumably, she even slept.”

“I’m just so worried about her!”

Maura could sympathise there, at least. “I am, too, Angela. I think she’s stuck in her grief process. She needs to let go of her anger at the situation and move on, but she keeps on shutting me out. Last night was the most relaxed I’ve seen her in weeks.”

“I just want to see her get past this,” Angela sighed and propped her elbows on the counter. “We all miss Barry, but Jane seems to be taking it really hard.”

“He was her partner,” Maura pointed out, “She spent more time with him than any of the rest of us. Angela, she should be taking it hard. Frankly, I would be more concerned about her if she weren’t.”

“But six months, Maura… She won’t even let Vince hire a replacement.”

The magazine made a slapping noise as she shut it. She was not going to be able to return to it anytime soon. “Everyone grieves at their own pace. Jane will talk about it when she’s ready. We just need to make sure we’re there for her when she is.”

“Okay, okay. But did you get her to say yes to the Red Sox game?” Angela asked hopefully. If anyone could pull Jane out of this mess, it would be Maura. One day, they would stop being so blind to each other, she knew it.

Maura smiled, oblivious to the knowing look on Angela’s face. “Yes, at the cost of garlic fries.”

Angela laughed, “Well, at least garlic breath won’t be a problem, right?” She winked, and Maura felt heat rise to her face. “I guess I’ll let you get back to it!” Angela breezed out of her kitchen, leaving Maura to puzzle out exactly what had just happened.

\----

The phone felt heavy and awkward in Jane’s hand, and she stared at the receiver before setting it down again. It was late, nearing ten, and the bullpen was empty. They had made little progress on the Brown case, and Jane was tired. She did not have the drive to solve this case, something about it was off putting. Her connection was more drawn to Sam and Julie then Jason Brown, and in her mind, she felt that their justice had been served.

Maybe she needed to look at it from a different angle. Maybe she wasn’t seeking out justice for a rapist, but proving that it had been neither Julie or Sam that had pulled the trigger. Because right now, she couldn’t deny that it wasn’t looking good, particularly for Sam. 

CSRU had finally found a partial on the gun, not enough to get a definitive match, but it wasn’t enough to prove or disprove that Sam had her hands on the gun either. 

Jane groaned and rubbed a knuckle against her eye, wishing, against her better judgement, that her partner were here. What she wouldn’t give to be able to bounce ideas off of Frost. She gave a low, humorless chuckle.

He would just accuse her of being soft on the girlfriend. He’d always gotten endless pleasure out of ribbing her about being the token lesbian cop. He’d joked with her once that they were the diversity hires, and while Jane had always reminded him she was attracted to men, he would just waggle his eyebrows at her and look pointedly at their Chief Medical Examiner.

“Uh huh,” he’d say, “And I’m a member of the Brady Bunch.”

His teasing was no less than she’d deserved, she supposed. One too many drinks and she’d let loose a comment about Maura’s legs in a pencil skirt, and how even she’d have to give it a double take. He had laughed, agreed, and _never_ forgotten. 

Jane smiled, and reached for her receiver again. The number came to her from memory. 

“Hey, Maur… you up?”

\----

Maura’s hair was disheveled and Jane had obviously pulled her from her bed when she’d arrived at the house. Despite being half asleep, Maura gave her a warm smile as she closed the front door behind her.

“Thanks for letting me come over,” Jane gave her a tentative smile. This was harder than it should have been to crawl her way back to normal. But Jane had to admit that maybe Maura was right. Maybe she had been so stuck in her anger at Frost that she wasn’t able to move forward.

Anger was comforting, familiar. She didn’t know that she wanted to let go of it just yet.

“Of course,” Maura led the way over to the couch, lowering herself gracefully onto it while Jane simply flopped. “I’m always here for you, whenever you need.”

Jane smiled thinly, the length of her day starting to catch up with her. She was exhausted, but forced herself to keep her eyes open. She watched as Maura tucked her feet under herself at the other end of the couch, reaching behind her for the throw blanket that Jane had always assumed was just decoration.

“Maur, I don’t even know where to start.” Jane’s voice was tired, and it hurt Maura’s heart to hear it.

“From the beginning is usually good.”

Jane huffed a laugh, “Wish I knew where that was,” she tipped her head back and flung one long arm over her eyes. “How do I even do this… how do I keep getting up everyday knowing that he’s not gonna be there?”

It was what she had been waiting for, but Maura was still surprised to hear it. She stayed silent, afraid that if she said anything it would break the spell that had fallen over Jane and she would clam up again.

“I miss him, Maura… I miss his jokes and his laugh and his bullshit. I feel like… I don’t know, like I lost a limb or something.” Jane’s voice was becoming thick, and she dropped off to almost a whisper. “I don’t think I want to keep doing this without him.”

Maura was reaching out for her as the first sob broke through, and Jane let herself be pulled into Maura’s lap. It was where she stayed for the rest of the night, her head pillowed against Maura’s shoulder, curled up into as tight of a ball as her long limbs would allow. Somewhere in the darkness, Maura had managed to fling the throw around them, and Jane’s arms found themselves gripping Maura’s waist.

If she minded, Maura never breathed a word of it, just stroked Jane’s hair until her breathing evened and she slipped into sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We have reached the end of the chapters that I have prewritten, so from here on, everything will be posted as I write it. I apologize in advance for any delays. (Though, if anyone were interested in beta reading, please let me know!)


	6. Chapter 6

Jane woke with a crick in her neck and her face pressed against warm skin. She slit her eyes open to see Maura’s familiar living room, and above her she recognized the calm breathing of Maura herself. Guiltily, Jane sat up, hoping not to wake the doctor beneath her. Her cheeks flushed when she realized her hands were pressed against the skin under Maura’s shirt, no where inappropriate, but bare skin was bare skin.

She tried not to think about how much she’d enjoyed the heat against her hands as she extracted herself from the couch, recovering Maura with the blanket they had shared last night. She absently rubbed at the scars on her palms as she went about the routine of making coffee with Maura’s unnecessarily complicated coffee pot. 

It was the smell of fresh coffee that woke Maura, and Jane glanced over toward her as she stirred on the couch. 

“Good morning,” she drawled, lifting her coffee to her lips and looking away as Maura gave a long stretch, one that involved arching her back in a way she refused to appreciate. 

“Good morning,” Maura returned, now trying to force her hair into some semblance of order. Jane grinned at her. Maura’s bed head was gloriously uncontrollable. “Tell me there’s more of… that…” 

“No, it’s all for me.” Jane rolled her eyes and turned to pour Maura a cup.

Maura laughed, accepting the mug that was offered to her. “Thank you. How did you sleep?” One auburn brow raised, a knowing smile hidden behind coffee.

Jane felt her neck prickle and knew her cheeks were red. “I’d have slept a lot better, except you snore.”

“I do not!”

“Are you kidding? You shook the rafters! And, I think you drooled in my hair.” Jane pointed an accusatory finger at a flat spot in her hair, enjoying for the first time in weeks the back and forth of their banter.

“Well, you’re a blanket hog,” Maura huffed. She was not up for sass this early in the morning, but it warmed her to see Jane looking less haunted. This was the Jane she had been missing. She hoped that last night was the start to her healing.

“Guilty as charged,” Jane agreed, unfazed. 

Silence hung between them for a moment, until they both began to speak at once.

“Jane, about -”

“I should -”

Jane laughed, suddenly awkward. “I have to get to work.” She deposited her mostly full cup of coffee in the sink and headed for the door, pausing briefly to plant a quick, unplanned kiss to the top of Maura’s head. “I’ll see you later, okay?” 

In stunned silence, Maura stared at the front door as it closed. “Okay.”

—-

If a full night of sleep had been good for Jane, it was even better for the case. Whereas last night they had no new information to speak of, the morning brought them three phone calls from other women who had filed reports against Brown. All had scheduled interviews, and it proved to keep Jane’s day very busy.

By the end of it, she had ingested an entire pot of coffee by herself, and skipped not only breakfast, but lunch as well. Her stomach was growling when she left her desk, and her mind finally began to drift to the night before.

She had painted the whole evening with a brush of embarrassment. She couldn’t believe that she had sobbed into Maura’s shirt for what felt like hours. Worse, she didn’t want to think about waking up with her hand on Maura’s skin, or how she had been unable to shake the feeling all day. 

Her phone had pinged with several messages from the medical examiner, and she had answered none of them. She knew she was behaving like a child, but she didn’t know how to stop. There was too much, everything felt like too much. 

_I hope you remembered to eat breakfast._

_Coffee doesn’t count._

_Jane, you need to remember to eat something rich in Vitamin B today._

And finally, the one that hurt her the most,

_Jane, please don’t shut me out._

Jane turned the screen off on her phone for the umpteenth time that hour. She needed to answer Maura, but first, she needed to understand what she was dealing with. What was this pull to spend time with Maura? And why did it feel so familiar, and still somehow surprising?

By the time she made it home, Jane had worked herself into a headache and had reached no resolution. She pulled her phone from her pocket and shot off a quick message to Maura, hoping to at least ease some of the other woman’s worry.

_Just made it home,_ she typed, _turning into Popeye as we speak._

_Does that make me Olive?_ came the immediate response.

Jane couldn’t help but laugh. She hadn’t expected Maura to get her spinach reference, much less return it in kind.

A moment later, her phone pinged again.

_I yam what I yam._

The smile hadn’t faded from the earlier text, and it widened now. It felt like the first one she’d meant in weeks, and the warmth that spread through her made the loneliness of her apartment seem a little more bearable. 

She continued to text Maura for the next hour, throughout making dinner (sans spinach), and even tidying her kitchen, an activity she hadn’t accomplished for longer than she cared to admit. Whatever had changed between the two of them the night before seemed unimportant now. 

When Jane finally fell asleep, it was with her phone in her hand.

—-

The next day brought its own challenges. Like every day for the last six months, the very idea of swinging her legs out of bed felt like it would take all of her energy. Jane groaned and flung her arm over her eyes, surprised to hear a loud thunk across the room. She peaked out of the crook of her elbow and eyed her phone, which now lay innocuously on the floor. 

It flashed a pitiful red light at her, and she realized that not only had she forgotten it was in her hand all night, but she had forgotten to plug it in before falling asleep. A soft smile flashed across her features, remembering the texts she’d shared with Maura last night. As quickly as it came, it was gone.

The only person she wanted to talk to about them was Barry freakin’ Frost, and she couldn’t. She couldn’t talk to him ever again.

Any effort she’d put into getting out of bed was gone, and Jane burrowed deeper into her blankets.

——

Frankie and Korsak were crowded around Korsak’s computer screen by the time Jane entered the bullpen. Frankie glanced up at her and beckoned her over, gesturing toward the screen before she’d even had a chance to look at it. 

“What?” She snapped irritably. It had taken her so long to get work this morning, she had foregone her typically coffee, and she was sincerely missing it now. 

“We ran a background check on all the interviews we have for today, since they were all people that our vic had assaulted, we wanted to see what we were working with.” Frankie took in her bedraggled appearance, opened his mouth to comment, and wisely shut it again.

Korsak leaned back in his chair, waving at the screen. “We got a spouse with a history of making threatening phone calls, one with a charge of petty theft, and one seemingly normal individual.” He gave her a half grin and raised his cup of coffee, “It’s fresh in the breakroom.”

“Tell me you didn’t make it.”

“Me? Heck no. Made Frankie do it.”

Jane groaned in happiness, “Oh thank god. Catch me up about the threatening phone call guy in a minute. That sounds promising.”

“It should,” Korsak continued the conversation like Jane had never stepped out for coffee, and she raised her eyebrows at him over her steaming BPD mug. “Name is Thomas Andrews, husband of Brown’s victim, Susan Andrews, 32 years old, part of the Local 7 Union.”

“Isn’t that the uh…” She cast around for the word, “The pipefitters or something?”

“Iron workers,” Frankie supplied. “He’s in good standing, but he has a habit of threatening people who get in his way. Usually it’s minor stuff - you know, yelling at a guy who gets your parking spot, or calling about a delayed delivery. This guy, though, he flies off the handle, goes big with his threats.”

“Words hurt, you know.” Jane smirked at Frankie’s surprised face, until her eyes slid to the empty desk in front of her. Her expression fell, and she let Frankie and Korsak carry the conversation, humming her agreement wherever necessary.

Her movements for the rest of the morning felt mechanical, but rather than the anger that had been her constant companion for months, she just felt sad. She would give so much to have the desk across from her filled, to joke with Frost how she had been joking with Frankie. The weight of it settled heavier across her shoulders.

—-

Thomas Andrews sat next to his wife, a hulking presence in the interrogation room. Jane smiled blandly at him from across the table, turning her attention back to the small woman next to him. She squirmed in her seat, obviously uncomfortable with Jane’s scrutiny. Susan Andrews glanced at the door again, and then toward her husband. 

It was obvious to Jane that it was not her idea to be in this room today. More likely, Susan wanted to forget that it had ever happened.

“Tell me about your interaction with Jason Brown.”

“Other than him stalking my wife?” Thomas leaned forward, and Jane raised an eyebrow at him, only to turn pointedly back to Susan.

“In your own words, if you don’t mind.” The smile she flashed would have won her an Academy Award, she was sure, but it seemed to only increase Susan’s unease.

She glanced up at her husband again, and then back at Jane. Her hands twisted over each other on the tabletop. “I met him at work,” she said quietly, and Jane felt the need to turn her ear toward her, as if Susan’s voice would fade away if she didn’t search for it. 

“Where do you work?”

“Boston Public Library. I didn’t think much of him at first, it took me awhile to realize he kept coming back on my shift. I didn’t notice that he always went to me to check out until he started following me to my car at night.” Her story was starting to gain traction, and Susan’s words began to rush out of her. “At first I thought he just wanted to talk about books.”

Thomas scoffed, and Susan slowed, her head dropping. Jane shot him a steely glare. It didn’t quite wipe the look off his face, but he sat back, subdued.

“Then what happened, Susan?” Jane reached across the table and gently put her hand on top of the other womans, stilling the frenetic motion of her fingers. 

“He just talked to me for a few weeks. I didn’t think it was anything scary, until he hit me with the book he’d checked out.” 

Thomas made a noise as if to interrupt, and Jane’s wire thin control on her temper snapped. “Mr. Andrews!” She fought the urge to throw him out, wrestling herself down to an almost kind, “Why don’t you fetch your wife a cup of coffee? Detective Korsak would be happy to show you where our amenities are located.”

“But she doesn’t drink cof-”

“Now, please.” Jane smiled thinly, and heard the door behind her open. A brief glance over her shoulder showed Korsak standing in the doorway, gesturing for Thomas to follow him.

The interrogation room door shut again, and Jane took a steadying breath.

“I’m sorry, Susan. You were saying?”

Susan stared at the door her husband had walked through for one long moment, then drug her eyes back to Jane. “He hit me.”

Jane nodded encouragingly, “With the book he’d checked out,” she led.

“No,” Susan shook her head, glancing at the door again. “My husband. He hit me.” She began to roll up her sleeves with shaking hands, and the dark bruises stood out starkly against her fair skin. “It started just after the assault. He keeps saying I must have asked for it, he doesn’t believe that I was raped. I just want away from him, Detective.”

Jane’s heart sank at the sight, and she hoped Korsak took his time. “We can help you with that, Susan. Are you willing to press charges?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“Okay.” Jane glanced up at the camera in the corner, then back to the woman in front of her. “Susan, do you think your husband killed Jason Brown?”

Susan’s eyes rose to meet Jane’s, her brows drawn down in a frown. “I think he might have.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay on updating. Like I said, we are past what I had pre-written, so updates are live as I write them. This is an un-beta'd work, so all errors are my own - if you see them, please point them out and I'll get right on fixing them. Thank you all for your kind comments and for sticking with me so far!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is purely a fluff-date, not a ton of plot development. More notes at the end.

The day whirled by, most of it spent on paperwork save for a brief twenty minutes where she placed Thomas Andrews under arrest for assaulting his wife, pending further charges. The other two interviews she had left to Frankie and Korsak, now up to her ears in holding paperwork and phone records from the Andrews. She needed to find a link, other than the rape, to Jason Brown, anything that could tie his death to Thomas.

She was beginning to wonder if it was fruitless. Thomas Andrews made approximately twenty phone calls a day - he must live with the thing glued to his ear, she thought - and all of them seemed to be either work related, or to multiple small businesses around the city. Probably to terrorise them with his mere presence. 

Nothing was connecting the two men other than they had both laid hands on Susan Andrews. Jane tried to run her hands through her hair, only to have her fingers get tangled in knots among the curls. She jerked her hands free with a string of profanity and pushed herself roughly away from her desk. 

It was past time for a break, and Maura was always telling her she needed to take better care of herself. 

A smile stole it’s way across her features. Her phone had been blowing up with texts from the ME, small encouragements and reminders that coffee was not a food group. Jane had been blessed with a relatively empty bullpen, so there was no one to call her out on her goofy smiles whenever her phone went off.

Only one persons interruptions would have been tolerated, and Jane’s smile faded with bittersweet sadness. Frost would have been delighted to rib her about whatever was happening with Maura. 

The elevator dinged her arrival to the basement, and Jane escorted herself directly to Maura’s office. It was empty when she arrived, but the air still carried the faint scent of Maura’s perfume. Jane settled herself on the latest uncomfortable designer couch and busied herself with untangling the ends of her hair.

A moment later, she felt thin fingers join her own, detangling dark curls from themselves. Tipping her head back, she gave Maura a lazy grin, “See? I take breaks.”

Maura hummed in agreement, leaning her hip against the back of the couch while she worked her fingers through Jane’s hair. “I would call this one break, Jane, and probably your first one today.”

Jane shrugged a noncommittal shoulder, her eyes sliding shut as she relaxed into Maura’s touch. What was the point in arguing when Maura already knew she was right? Besides, arguing 

would mean pulling away from Maura’s fingers, and the repetitive motion was too soothing to move away from.

They continued in companionable silence until Jane’s hair was tangle free, and frizzier than she typically liked it. Maura had moved to sit next to her on the couch, ankles crossed delicately in front of her. Jane had eyed the cream pencil skirt with interest, something that had made Maura’s mouth twitch with amusement. 

“Dr. Isles, I have those -” Susie’s voice from the door abruptly stopped, jerking Jane and Maura from their moment of peace. Jane started to sit up, and Maura stopped her with a hand on the shoulder, gesturing Susie into the office with her other hand.

Jane forced a grin, squirming inside. “S’up Chang?”

Susie shifted from foot to foot, “Detective. I didn’t realize you were here.” She turned back to Maura, offering her a file. “I have the reports back on John Doe that you’d asked for. I’ll just be going.”

Maura took the file with her free hand, smiling benignly at Susie. “Thank you. Why don’t you go home for the evening, Senior Criminalist Chang?” Her voice was tight, and Jane pushed past the resistance of Maura’s hand to sit up.

“Of course,” Susie beat a hasty retreat, and Jane turned to look at Maura, her eyebrows raised in equal parts amusement and disbelief. 

“Feeling guilty, Maur?” Jane tilted her head slightly to the side, and Maura sighed heavily.

“Of course not, Jane. Why would I feel guilty about spending time with you?”

“Company time,” Jane teased, “Seriously, though, Maur. You just tilted and then dismissed Chang. You two have been practically chummy lately, that’s gotta sting.”

Maura brushed Jane’s concern away, “Susie caught me off guard,” she excused, “I thought she’d left already. I wasn’t anticipating that we would be interrupted.” Otherwise she would never have indulged in such a personal moment in the office. 

What did she have to feel guilty about, in any case? It was no secret that she and Jane spent personal time together, and she was sure that sitting closely on a couch was nothing that other friends wouldn’t have done. There was no cause to dismiss Susie so unceremoniously. 

No, it was her reaction to the interruption that would spur rumors. 

“I didn’t realize you had a John Doe in,” Jane changed the subject, directing her attention to the forgotten folder in Maura’s hand.

“Oh,” Maura smiled at her, embracing the change in topic. “He just came in last night, a through and through to the right shoulder. I had Susie run a basic toxicology. I expected it much earlier today, there must have been some backlog to work through as well.”

“Look at you, Dr. Isles, using the lingo,” Jane grinned at her.

Maura couldn’t stop her warm smile in return. Her relief at seeing Jane joke was almost palpable. She had been worried what a day of purely paperwork would mean for the detective. Jane had always found paperwork to be mind numbing, she had worried it would allow her too much time to let her mind wander. Sitting across from Frost’s empty desk couldn’t possibly help, either. 

But Jane’s mood seemed to have held. Frankie had mentioned to her in passing that Jane had come in late that morning, and her general avoidance of any meaningful conversation the night before had not been lost on Maura. 

She was happy to see progress made was not progress lost. 

“Earth to Isles, you in there?” Jane was waving a hand in front of her face, which suddenly felt much warmer. 

“Of course,” she smiled to cover her moment of inattention, “I’m sorry, Jane, it’s been a long day and I have a lot on my mind.”

Jane tried to give an understanding smile. An occupied mind was something she could relate with. “It’s fine, Maur. I was just teasing. I know we have the Sox game this weekend, but it’s okay if you don’t want to -”

“Oh, Jane, no! Of course I want to go to the game with you. Please don’t… I would never cancel that.” Maura reached out for Jane’s hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze. 

A smile crossed her face at Maura’s earnest tone, but her eyes were fixed on their hands. It wasn’t the first time Maura had taken her hand, but it was the first time Jane had ever noticed how soft her skin was, or how much lighter it was against her own. Eyes still focused on their hands, Jane turned hers over and entwined her fingers with Maura’s, giving them a quick squeeze. 

“That’s good, because I’ve actually started looking forward to it.” Jane gave her a conspiratorial grin, “And to think, it was a set up by my mother.”

Maura rolled her eyes, “It was not a _set up_, Jane! It was just a suggestion -”

“She doesn’t _do_ suggestions! She always has an ulterior motive.”

“I’m sure she’s just been concerned about you.”

Jane made an unconvinced noise, and regretfully detangled her hand from Maura’s. “I have a mountain of paperwork I need to finish before I can leave tonight. I should go.”

“I wish you didn’t have to handle it by yourself.” She caught Jane’s eye and gave her a small, tentative smile. “It would just be easier if you had someone to help you with it, I mean.”

“Mm,” Jane made a noncommittal noise, pushing herself into a standing position. “Well, since there’s no replacing him, I guess you’ll have to do, Doctor. C’mon, up.” She pulled Maura up by the elbow and marched her unceremoniously to the elevator, Maura sputtering the whole way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First off - apologies for the delay and short interlude. The plot will resume on the next update, I promise. What I can't promise is WHEN that update will be. I am going to aim for next week, but my wife and I are staring down the barrel of some truly frightening medical issues. I'm hoping the results turn up with just a coincidence of symptoms, but I don't know for sure.


	8. Chapter 8

“I never even met the guy,” Andrews insisted for the tenth time that morning, “How can I have killed a guy I never met?”

Jane let the observation room door smack closed behind her. She could hear Frankie’s muffled voice as she passed the interrogation room, and knew he would get no further than she had with Andrews. He had confessed to beating his wife but staunchly denied murdering her rapist. His alibi was weak, but they had found no evidence that Andrews had even known who his wife’s attacker had been.

In fact, Brown seemed to have done a great job of keeping himself separate from all of his victims until Julie. His library card had been under a different name, his other two victims had been apparently random. Julie was the first, and it seemed only, woman that had been closely connected to him. 

No matter how she looked at it now, the evidence kept coming back to Julie and Sam. Thomas Andrews, no matter how much she didn’t like him, had a solid alibi and no connection to the victim. Susan Andrews didn’t seem capable of pushing her husband away, much less tracking down her rapist, shooting him, and staging it as a suicide. 

As little as she liked the idea, it was time to take a harder look at the people close to Julie. If she wanted to break this case, she needed to set aside her own feelings about the suspects and do her job.

What she didn’t like was what her job was turning up. After the welfare check, Sam had said she’d gone straight home, where she had spent about an hour with Julie before her shift at the gym. After, she was alone. Alone, and with plenty of time to go back to Jason Brown’s apartment, shoot him, and make it home before Jane had come to see her.

Sam had motive, access to the victim, but nothing tying her to the gun. Her prints were in the apartment, but the gun was scrubbed clean. 

Jane flopped herself into her desk chair and scrubbed her hands over her face. This was getting her nowhere. She was chasing her own damn tail, and as much as she hated it, she knew what her next step was.

“Korsak,” she heard from the next desk over. “Huh. Okay, we’ll be down in a minute.” The phone clattered back into its holder, and she let her hands drop from her face.

“What’s up?” 

“Any idea why the Crime Lab would call me instead of you?”

“Who was it?” A grin crossed her face, “Was it Chang?”

“Might’ve been.” Korsak shrugged a shoulder.

Jane laughed, and missed the look of relief that flashed over Korsak’s face. “She’s scared of Maura.”

“Who would be scared of Dr. Isles?”

“You’d be scared of her, too, if you’d been on the receiving end of the nicest ass-chewing I’ve ever seen.” Korsak flashed her a smirk, and Jane groaned in disgust. “Don’t you dare. I don’t want to know, I don’t even want to think about it.”

“Hey, you said it, not me.”

“I regret it already. Let’s go, I want to hear what Chang didn’t want to tell me.”

\----

The Crime Lab was crisp, white, and sterile. It had always reminded Jane of a hospital, something she was sure the department issued shrink wanted to talk to her about something she was extra sure she would never tell them. Like she never told them anything else. In fact, the only person she had ever mentioned it to had been Maura, who had smiled and agreed with her. 

It was the chemicals, she’d said. They used the same cleaning solutions that the hospital used because of their efficiency. Jane had quipped that they efficiently made her nauseous.

She plastered a smirk over the churn of her stomach as she recognized Susie’s deer in the headlights expression. “What’ve you got?” she said by way of greeting, 

Susie glanced between Jane and Korsak, settling her gaze on the much less amused face of Korsak. “Hair,” she said, and when Jane arched an eyebrow at her, she scrambled to continue, “I mean, not a human hair,” she laughed nervously, “It’s canine, if you want to take a look…” she gestured toward a microscope, and Jane glanced at Korsak, who shrugged at her as if to say, ‘better you than me.’

Jane rolled her eyes and took two steps around the table to the microscope. As she was bending over to look, she heard the lab door swish open and immediately smelled a familiar, sweet perfume over the harsh cleaning chemical smell she associated with the white walled room. Susie’s voice droned in the background about the differences between the hair Jane was looking at but not seeing. She half listened to the description of what type of dog it might belong to, but the information was muted, her focus instead on the approach of a white coat and warmth that stopped next to her side.

“Jane,” Maura greeted, and Jane pointedly ignored the flip her stomach performed. She glanced up at Maura from the corner of her eye and offered her a crooked grin, which was returned with an amused twist of Maura’s lips.

“Maura,” Jane finally returned, straightening her back and turning to see Korsak with his eyebrows almost in his hairline. She raised hers and spread her hands in a ‘what?’ gesture that had him shaking his head in dismissal.

Susie glanced between the three of them and cleared her throat awkwardly. “In conclusion, the canine in question is a large, short haired breed, likely a mastiff or a boxer.”

“Didn’t you say Redford had a dog?” Korsak asked. His tone was pleasant, but Jane didn’t miss the look that suggested she stop ignoring the signs. 

“A mutt,” Jane shrugged and shifted out of Maura’s path, her eyes tracking Maura’s hair as it fell over her shoulder while she looked into the microscope. “Some kind of pit bull mix, I think. Head like a tank.”

Maura stood and shot Jane an almost apologetic glance, “This hair looks compatible with a larger terrier breed. I would need a sample from the dog in question, but it would be possible to compare without the need for further conjecture.”

“It’s enough to get a warrant, at least.”

“We won’t need one,” Jane sighed, resigned. Korsak was right, though she still didn’t want to admit it. “That dog will be all over you as soon as you get to the door, you won’t be able to walk away without at least one hair on you. I’ll head out there now.”

In the end, Korsak went with her, “Just in case we need to bring the dog with us.” Jane had just rolled her eyes at him and told him to grab his keys - no way was she putting another dog in the back of her car. She worked for Boston Homicide, not Boston Animal Control.

But now she was sitting in Korsak’s front seat, her boots framed by loose water bottles and a handful of fast food wrappers. Every so often, she would catch Korsak glancing at her, and each time, it made her shrink down in the passenger seat a little bit more. She could tell he was gearing himself up for a pep talk that she did not want to attend. He opened his mouth and Jane barely contained her groan of dread.

“You seem better.”

Jane blinked, “What?”

That was not what she'd been expecting at all. She'd been thinking something along the lines of, 'you need to be nicer to Frankie,' or 'stop glaring at people who look at Frost's desk.'

"You've been more like yourself lately."

"I've always been myself."

"You know what I mean. You've stopped snarling at everyone around you, I think I've even seen you smile once or twice this week. I'd call that improvement.

"I’d call that none of your business,” Jane muttered, but there was no heat behind it. 

“It’s always gonna be my business, Jane.” Korsak gave her a sad smile, and the conversation lulled between them.

She hated it when he was right. She had been feeling better. Somewhere in the last week, it was like the gaping hole in her chest had started to heal. Certainly not close, it felt as wide as it ever had been, but… maybe it was more shallow than before. Not deep enough to drown herself in, at least.

A fresh wave of guilt came over her, and she slumped further into Korsak’s unforgiving passenger seat. What right did she have to feel any better when Frost was still - and always would be - gone?

“Stop it,” Korsak didn’t even look at her, and Jane returned the favor, turning her glare out the window. “Making yourself miserable isn’t going to bring him any peace, Jane. He would want you to move on and keep solving cases. He would want you to be happy.”

Jane opened her mouth to protest and snapped it shut seconds later. He was right - of course he was. But what did happy mean for her, anymore? Losing Frost had shaken her world to the core. She had been happy before, hadn’t she? She could hardly remember.

Flashes of remembered loneliness, longing, too many nights staring at the same crack in her ceiling came back to her. No, she had not been happy before. Somewhere along the line, she had found happiness and flirted with the line of it.

Smiles over shared meals, knowing that someone wanted her around enough to go out of their way to keep her beer in the fridge when she knew they preferred wine. In those moments, Jane knew what happiness was supposed to feel like. Maybe it was time she let that back into the rest of her life. Maybe…

Her train of thought was cut off when Korsak stopped the car, and Jane saw the familiar little house of Samantha Redford.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for all your comments, kudos, patience, and support. When it comes to this story, I think realistically there are only a handful more chapters to go. There may be one or two more twists and turns, but the bulk of the story is told. Keep a lookout for the next installments - I'm hoping to get them to you soon.


	9. Chapter 9

It was a familiar scene to Jane now. Sam was bent over, her fingers curled around Dane’s collar while the brick headed dog tried to push his way out of the door to reach them. Only, this time it was Korsak who crouched down, Korsak who reassured Sam that the dog was fine, and Jane found herself able to hang back and let someone else do the talking.

Only, Sam seemed uninterested in what Korsak had to say. Instead, she turned her gaze to Jane, and raised her eyebrows in surprise. “You need a hair sample from my dog?” 

Jane bit her tongue on the comment that Korsak was now covered in them and nodded. “Yes. There’s been a development in the case and we’re covering all of our angles.”

Sam’s eyebrows creeped higher, and her fingers loosened on Dane’s collar. He surged forward and Korsak rocked back onto his heels to keep seventy pounds of dog upright. "Sounds to me like you're covering just one."

Glancing at Korsak, Jane wanted nothing more than to agree with Sam. Instead, she pried her tongue down from the roof of her mouth where it had glued itself and smiled thinly. "Did you happen to bring your dog with you to Mr. Brown's apartment that night?"

The dog in question huffed a breath against Jane's hand, seemingly satisfied with leaning his entire weight against Korsak. Jane absently rubbed his head, her eyes still on Samantha's face as she struggled to control her expression. It was darting between emotions, first offense, then confusion, and shock, until finally her brows settled into defiant denial.

"Of course not."

"Did anyone else have access to him?" Korsak asked from the ground.

Jane watched Sam's face darken further, and saw the familiar struggle of someone who didn't want to hinder the justice system, but who also felt the need to protect someone. Finally, she shook her head in a way that wasn't refusal, but resignation. "My brother. We pay him to walk Dane, sometimes."

"And did your brother take him out that night?" Korsak disentangled himself carefully from Dane, pushing himself to his feet.

Sam nodded slowly, like it was the last thing she wanted to do. “Teddy came over right after I came back from Jason’s… but, he wouldn’t have… He only took Dane out for an hour, maybe less!”

Korsak and Jane exchanged looks of silent agreement, and Jane took a half step forward, reaching out toward Sam. The young woman seemed to deflate, and the door swung all the way open. Dane gave up his efforts to knock over Korsak and retreated back into the house, and Sam lurched back to give the lumbering dog room, and Jane took in the dark circles under her eyes, the t-shirt that hung off her frame, and the shabby gray sweat pants covered in Dane’s hair.

She looked much like Jane had felt for the last few months, as though the world had settled itself on her shoulders and found her wanting.

Sam gestured them wearily inside, and Jane stepped into the now familiar house. This time, she was not escorted to the kitchen, instead they were directed to sit down in the small living room, on a couch that was very clearly occupied by Dane more often than people. 

Her nose itched as she sat down, but Jane stoutly ignored it. 

“I know you have a lot going on right now,” 

Sam snorted back a laugh and muttered, “Understatement of the year.”

“But,” Korsak pressed on, “We need you to tell us about Teddy, and what Teddy might have known about your current situation. We also need your permission to take a sample from Dane.”

Without permission, the samples they were currently surrounded with may not be admissible in court. Jane was sure there could be some sort of work around argument a savvy lawyer could figure out, but it would be easier for everyone involved if the chain of evidence didn’t involve any loopholes. 

Of course, now with her brother as a suspect, Jane figured it was even less likely that Sam would simply grant them permission to shave the dog. 

To Jane’s surprise, Sam nodded numbly. “Yeah… take whatever you need.” She folded herself into a small armchair, hugging her knees to her chest. 

Korsak stood to address the task of a properly sourced sample from Dane, who was now nowhere to be seen, leaving Jane and Sam alone in the living room. The silence stretched for a full minute before Sam finally lifted her head to look at Jane.

“Do you think Teddy killed him?” Her voice was small, and Jane was reminded immediately of children she’d interviewed in the past. They always sounded the same, like their whole world depended entirely on what she said next.

“I don’t know, Sam.” Jane gave a small shrug, “I only know what the evidence gives me, and right now, the evidence tells me that someone had a dog in Brown’s apartment that night. We already know that you were there, but you didn’t take Dane. Now we know that Teddy took Dane out, for about an hour, but you don’t know where. What we need to know is if the dog that was in Brown’s apartment was Dane.”

“But, some of his hair could have just come off my clothes or something.” Sam sounded like she was grasping at straws, and Jane was sure Sam knew more than she was letting on. 

She opted for patience, and nodded in agreement. “It could have, sure. Like I said, we’re looking at all of the angles. Our first step is to see if Dane was even there.”

Sam was still nodding, jerky little movements. She looked like she wasn’t even aware she was making them, and finally she stilled, resting her chin on her knees. The position made her look younger than she was, and Jane felt a weariness settle across her again. 

“I’d like it if you could tell me about Teddy.”

A small smile shot across Sam’s face, gone as quickly as it came. “He’s my little brother. He’s barely an adult, you know? He’s three years younger than I am, but he just got his first apartment a few months about. He works a few odd jobs to make ends meet, that’s why Julie and I pay him to walk Dane sometimes. He’s kind of a lazy dog, he doesn’t really need it, but Teddy does, you know?”

“Sure. I have a brother like that myself. He’s a good guy, but he had a rough start to things.” 

“Did he get it figured out?” 

Jane smiled, nodding. “You know, he did. He’s a dad, now, and he doesn’t have to walk my dog anymore for money, or even just something to do.”

“That’s what I want for Teddy. I want him to have the chance to figure it out, to get his life together.”

Twenty five to life may put a damper on that, Jane thought wryly, but said instead, “When was the last time you spoke to Teddy?”

“Yesterday. He came by to walk Dane and check on Julie.”

Behind Sam, Korsak waved an evidence bag of freshly sourced dog hair at her before stuffing it into his jacket pocket.

“If I needed to reach Teddy, what would be the easiest way to find him?”

“At work,” Sam pushed a hand through her short hair, “The liquor store on Boylston Street. He’s there most days.” 

Jane stood, brushing dog hair off her pants. Korsak made a point to thank Sam for her time as she showed them to the door, and he led the way down the path toward the car. Before Jane could follow him, Sam shot a hand out and grabbed her by the elbow.

"Be careful with him, Detective. Teddy's a good guy, but he's mixed up in some stupid shit, and even if he didn't do it… I don't want anyone getting hurt."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the late update, and the short update. I wanted to make sure I got it posted for you all before the holiday really hits. Thank you all for every kudos and comment you've left, they always make my day! Stay tuned for more, I may be slow to get the updates out, but I have no intention of abandoning this (almost complete!) work.


	10. Chapter 10

The crack of baseballs hitting bats echoed even over the rapidly filling stadium. Jane had almost forgotten about the Red Sox game (she was still insisting that she had been set up for it), until Maura had called to confirm what time she wanted to be picked up.

Jane had barely managed to contain her swearing, and emptied her dresser to find her jersey buried in the bottom drawer.

Now, they were seated in the grandstands, hands full of promised garlic fries, and Maura had waved off her protests that it was too much.

“I would have purchased a box, but you’re always telling me the game is best enjoyed in the crowds.”

It warmed something cold and dormant in her that Maura always listened to what she said, even if some of what she said was flippant and uncaring, and occasionally not true. Maura listened, she remembered, and where it counted, she applied her gathered knowledge to the situation at hand. Some days it was easy to forget Maura was a scientist. Other days, it smacked her in the face.

“You seem distracted, Jane.”

“I’m sorry,” Jane said automatically, and found herself reaching out to Maura, giving her arm a quick squeeze before self consciously letting go. “I just keep thinking about the case.” She shoved a garlic fry into her mouth, buying herself a minute to try to organize her thoughts. “I just keep thinking about Sam.”

Maura was halfway through setting her open drink down between her feet when she paused, her eyebrows drawn down into what Jane had always privately called her, ‘I’m thinking very seriously,’ frown.

“I suppose she has been given an unfortunate set of circumstances,” she finally said, thoughtfully. 

“‘An unfortunate set of circumstances?’ Maura, that is the understatement of this century.” Jane rolled her eyes, “That’s a woman who is living with the fact that her partner was raped by someone she thought was a friend - even if the guy was a total creep, - and is now pregnant from that assault. That’s bad enough on its own! But now, our main suspect is her brother, who in her own words, is involved in ‘stupid shit.’ I think I’d call that a little more than ‘unfortunate.’”

“I suppose you’re right,” Maura smiled, shrugging her shoulders underneath her borrowed Red Sox sweater. Jane remembered lending it to her for the last game they had attended, and she had teased Maura about it all the way up to their seats. “Though, I do think Sam is also quite lucky.”

Jane thought her eyes might pop out of her head, “Lucky!” she repeated, shaking her head in disbelief. “How can you possibly think she’s lucky?”

Something in Maura’s expression shifted, and she leaned back in her seat slightly, as if to give Jane as much space as she could. It made Jane want to reach out to her again, to ditch her over seasoned garlic fries and take Maura’s hand. “Obviously, Sam is someone who the people in her life care about. If she weren't, her partner-," Maura waved her hand vaguely, casting about for the name. 

"Julie."

"Right, Julie, would have left her. That isn't a situation you want a loved one to be in, and often, women who have been assaulted will leave their current relationship in an effort to spare their partner pain." Seeing that Jane was not going to interrupt her, Maura continued, "Not only that, Sam has her brother, who while he may not be involved in the most savory behaviors, obviously cares about his sister and her partner. If he didn't, why would he risk incarceration for murdering Julie's rapist?"

"Maybe he just didn't like the guy," Jane took a deep drink from her beer,

Maura gave her a long suffering look, and plowed on. “In a similar situation, I would think it entirely plausible that Frankie, or Tommy, would do the same thing for you.”

Opening her mouth to answer, Jane shut it again just as quickly. She floundered for some sort of response, something that sounded remotely better than, ‘no way!’ All she could think of was the overwhelming need to protect Maura, because in this hypothetical situation, there would be no other partner for Jane than Maura.

She was saved from her floundering by the crackle of overhead speakers, inviting everyone to take their seats and prepare for the opening announcements. Slumping into her seat, Jane spent most of the first inning considering the woman next to her. She managed to cheer where appropriate, and had no trouble at all finishing off her first round of beer, but her attention to the game so close in front of her was absent, at best.

Instead, she thought about a world where Maura could be hurt, where Maura was in a situation that made it hard to stand by her. Would she stay, support her through the hard times? Or would she tuck tail and run?

It wasn’t until the third inning, when Maura turned to look at her inquisitively that she realized she already knew the answer to that question. They’d already lived it, it was already done.

“Jane?” Maura’s expression was crumpling into a frown, and she leaned in to rest the back of her hand against Jane’s forehead.

“I’m fine, Maur,” Jane tried to smile, but it was wobbly, at best. “Better than fine. I’m great. This is great.”

It was like seeing Maura with new eyes. Now that she’d recognized something that had always been there, she couldn’t look away. She took in the laugh lines that Maura had recently come to complain about, the concern in her expression that wasn’t tampered by Jane’s blustering, as it hadn’t been for the last six months. 

The way Maura was leaning in, Jane had a sudden, crazy, irrational thought - they were going to end up on Kiss Cam, and that was not how she wanted their first kiss to go.

She wasn’t sure which part was crazier, that they stood a chance of being on kiss cam, or that one day they may kiss at all.

Her eyes flicked down from Maura’s eyes to her lips, and then back up guiltily. She didn’t miss the raise in Maura’s eyebrows, or the slight curve to her mouth that shot a spark of hope through her.

“Really,” Jane almost whispered, “I’m okay.”

Maura sat back, to Jane’s great relief. Air rushed back into her lungs, and she realized with relief that the Kiss Cam was focused across the field at man down on one knee. She watched for a moment as the woman glanced around, noticed the audience they had, and visibly dialed up her reaction. She heard Maura scoff next to her.

“I couldn’t imagine being proposed to in such a public place,” Maura seemed genuinely insulted for the woman on the screen, who was now doing her best to look properly overwhelmed with emotion. “A proposal should be something private, something intimate.”

Jane’s brain stalled on the word, ‘intimate,’ and all she could do was nod her agreement. 

She made it to the bottom of the fifth before her sense of self preservation kicked in. Winding her way down the steps toward concessions, with the intent of getting both of them a refill, Jane tried to shake herself into some semblance of normalcy. 

Her brain was reeling, struggling with the realization that she had been harboring feelings for Maura for… years, most likely. The more she thought about it, the more she realized it was true. Her memory helpfully supplied image after image of moments that Jane had obviously toed the line, and stepped back.

For a moment, she saw Barry’s triumphant grin, and shook her head with a rueful smile. He would have been crowing, laughing at how long it had taken her to realize, how he had always known, how they were now truly the diversity hires. Jane rolled her eyes, but the smile didn’t leave her face all the way through paying eight dollars per refill. 

By the time she made it back to their seats, it was the middle of the sixth and Maura was looking restless. She greeted Jane with a brilliant smile, one that Jane was more than happy to return. 

“Special delivery,” she quipped, handing Maura her overpriced beer. 

“Thank you,” Maura accepted the beer graciously, taking an appreciative sip. “You missed a fantastic play.”

“I’ll catch it in reruns,” Jane dropped herself into the seat next to Maura, her own drink in one hand, and her other arm draping across Maura’s back. It was a move she had done countless times before, but it had never made her so nervous as it did now. 

Maura leaned into her, shifting in her seat so the arm of the chair between them didn’t dig into her side. “Thank you,” she said again, softly this time. 

“For what?” Jane raised an eyebrow at her, aiming for nonchalant and missing.

“For coming with me. I know you think this was set up by your mother, but it means a lot to me that you came anyway.”

“This is the best set up my mother’s ever had,” Jane shrugged, giving Maura’s shoulder a squeeze with the arm draped around her. 

Maura laughed, “She’s certainly done worse. Do you remember that date she tricked you into with Lieutenant Grant?”

Jane groaned dramatically, “Oh my God, don’t remind me! She conned me into that little black dress and everything. It was mortifying.”

“Oh, I’d forgotten about the dress! Do you still have it?”

“Buried in the back of my closet, probably.”

“We should arrange an expedition, see what else is hidden in the back of your closet.”

Something in Maura’s tone made Jane turn to look at her. She was greeted with a blandly innocent expression that she didn’t buy for one second. “Well,” she said carefully, “if it’s anything important, I’m sure you’d be the one to find it.”

“That’s a promise,” Maura boldly pressed a kiss to Jane’s cheek, before settling back to watch the game in silence.

Whatever had changed between them, Jane decided not to worry about it. She left her arm draped around Maura, and when Maura placed a hand on her knee, she didn’t pull away. It was like something had finally settled into place, and she was done trying to fight something that felt so right.

Top of the eighth, Jane’s phone rang, and she regretfully disentangled herself from Maura to reach her it. “Rizzoli,” she clipped.

“Janie, we found Teddy Redford.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for waiting so patiently for this update! I hit some stubborn writer's block and finally managed to advance the story past it. I'm excited for the next couple of chapters, I hope you all are too!


	11. Chapter 11

Teddy Redford was a scrawny twenty one year old that slouched down in the unforgiving metal chair of the interrogation room. Across from him, Frankie was lounged back in his own chair, waiting with feigned patience. Jane stood behind the observation glass with her arms crossed over the red striping of her jersey. Next to her, Maura had her hands tucked into the pocket of her officially stolen sweater.

She watched as Frankie leaned forward in his chair, placing his hands on either side of the thin manila folder on the table. In it was all the information they had managed to find on Theodore Redford. It contained two reports of breaking and entering, one record of minor in possession, and one reckless driving charge, where he had served thirty days. Last contact with his parole officer, two weeks prior. 

Frankie gave Teddy his most disarming, good ol’ boy smile. Teddy slid impossibly further down in his seat.

“I ain’t got nothing to say to you.” 

“I’m sure you don’t,” Frankie flipped open the folder, perusing the papers in it like he had all the time in the world.

The silence in the room dragged on, and Teddy’s eyes started to flick toward the door, the camera, the one way mirror. Frankie casually turned another page, and even Jane started to shift in impatience. 

“C’mon man,” Teddy groaned, rolling his head back on his shoulders. “You got nothin’ on me. I didn’t rob no store.”

“No one said anything about a robbery, Teddy.” Frankie’s voice was mild, and Jane recognized it as the tone Ma used when she didn’t want them to think they were in trouble. “Though, if you’d care to admit to it, we can add it to your list of charges.”

Teddy sputtered, jerking himself into an upright position. “What charges, man? I didn’t do anything!”

“Oh, suddenly his grammar improves,” Jane muttered, and Maura opened her mouth, no doubt to give a lecture on colloquial speaking patterns, when Frankie spoke.

“Then I’m sure you won’t mind talking to me about your sister.”

“What about Sammy? Is she in trouble?”

“Not so far,” Frankie shrugged, “We’d like to keep her out of trouble. Isn’t that the goal of a little brother? To keep their sisters safe, and out of trouble?”

“What would you know about it?” Teddy grumbled darkly, “Bet you don’t even have a sister.”

Frankie laughed, abandoning the file in front of him. “Oh, I do. Stubborn ass that she is,” he glanced toward the glass, “I mean, it’s taken her years to see something right in front of her nose. If I thought I could’ve made her see it earlier without getting punched, I would have. But, sister’s see things in their own time, right?”

Teddy shook his head, trying to hide a smile of agreement. “Sammy thinks she’s so much smarter than me, just cause she’s older. Never lets me help her out, ‘cept for walking the dog.”

“Don’t blow it, Frankie,” Jane leaned toward the glass as Frankie paused, his interest very obviously piqued. She felt Maura’s hand on her arm, skin suddenly tingling. 

“He’ll be fine, Jane. He can do this.”

“Awfully nice of you to walk her dog. My sister had this yappy little thing, always underfoot.”

Teddy made a dismissive noise, “Nah, my sis has this big pitbull, name’s Dane. Everyone always thinks he’s tough, but he’s a big softy. All he wants are treats and belly rubs, man. That dog ain’t a threat to nobody.”

“Sounds like a good dog. You walk him often?”

“Couple times a week. Kinda nice, people leave me alone when I’ve got him. Seen ‘em cross the street like he’s gonna attack their kids or some shit.”

“You ever use him to intimidate anyone?” Frankie asked casually, “Maybe scare someone a bit?”

“I mean,” Teddy shifted uncertainly, “Only once or twice. I’m trying to stay clean. It’s only been a couple of weeks. My PO’s been really helping me out, but it’s hard to stop talkin’ to everyone you know. They find me at work and it’s hard to say no. But Dane’s a scary looking dog, and he keeps ‘em at a distance.”

Frankie nodded in genuine understanding, “Anyone else?”

Teddy fell silent, staring down at the table. “I think I need a lawyer.”

“That’s as good as done,” Jane uncrossed her arms and turned away from the glass in front of her. 

“He hasn’t admitted to anything.” Maura pointed out, her eyes following Jane’s movements with consideration. 

Jane shrugged, paused, and seemed to make whatever choice she had been thinking about. She placed her hand on Maura’s back as she guided the doctor out of the observation room, and didn’t remove it as they reached the hallway. “He doesn’t need to, right now. People who have nothing to hide don’t request a lawyer under that kind of questioning. I think as soon as we get a public defender in there, he’ll spill the beans about being in that apartment with Dane, and about where that gun came from.”

Maura glanced at her, doing a poor job of hiding her smile. “You know I don’t like conjecture.”

“Well, it’s a good thing it’s my conjecture and not yours, isn’t it?” Jane grinned at her, stopping them at the elevator. “I’m going to have to stay and help Frankie with the paperwork to wrap this up. After, do you think…” she trailed off, suddenly unsure how to finish the invitation that used to come so naturally.

“I’ll order us dinner,” Maura finished for her, turning so they were facing each other. She rested one hand on Jane’s shoulder and pushed herself up to her tiptoes, leaning in and placing a soft kiss to the detectives cheek.

For the second time that day, it was like the air had been pulled out of her lungs, leaving Jane feeling lightheaded. “Okay,” she managed to croak out. Maura slid her hand down, tangled their fingers together for one brief moment, squeezed, and finally let go, stepping into the elevator that Jane had entirely ignored for the last few minutes. “I’ll text you when I leave.”

The warmth of Maura’s smile carried Jane through the next several hours of slogging through paperwork, dealing with the public defender, who managed to finagle Teddy a deal, and finally - _finally_ \- logging Teddy’s confession. She had long since shed her Red Sox jersey when he finally admitted to taking Dane to Brown’s apartment, a borrowed .22 stuffed in the back of his pants. The gun had been provided by one of his drug running buddies, shortly after Sam had broken down and told her brother the whole story.

It was paperwork no one wanted to do, now, particularly given the circumstances of the case. Who wanted to put away a little brother just trying to take care of his sister? 

At some point, Frankie had made the fumbling comment, “Y’know, I probably would’ve done the same if something like that happened to you or Maura…” She had managed to escape the conversation without punching him in the arm, which she was counting as a victory. 

Through hours of paperwork and multiple attempts of conversation that she gracelessly avoided, Jane's cheek tingled pleasantly with the memory of Maura's lips. More than once, she found herself with her fingertips pressed against the spot, staring blankly at her computer screen with a dopey smile on her face.

“Go home,” Korsak’s voice interrupted her reverie, and Jane snapped her back up straight, bringing her hand down from her face. “The look on your face is so sweet it’s giving me a cavity.”

Jane felt a flush creep up the back of her neck. Thankfully, Korsak’s eyes returned to his paperwork and he missed the face she pulled at him as she straightened her desk a little more noisily than was strictly necessary. When her chair finally bumped into her desk with a clatter, Korsak glanced up at her again with a knowing grin on his face.

“Jane?” 

Halfway through slinging her coat on, Jane raised her eyebrows at him, her impatience plastered all over her face and into her voice, “What?”

Korsak’s grin spread, “Tell the Doc I said ‘hi.’”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am SO SORRY this took so long to put out, AND that it is embarrassingly short. But, now that the case is wrapped up, and the last chapter is on us, we'll see if I can get Jane to spit out a little more healing and a little more admitting her damn feelings, finally. 
> 
> Thank you all for your comments and kudos, and stay tuned. With any luck, the next chapter won't take a month to see the light of day.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the heinously long delay, and then the very short length of this chapter. I struggled to get it out, and I'm not entirely happy with it, but I wanted to wrap up what I started.

Jane fidgeted from foot to foot on the familiar front step of Maura’s house. For the first time in years, she stared at the front door and wondered - should she knock? Should she just come in like always, drop her keys in the bowl Maura had purchased specifically for that reason and -

It was here her brain stopped, stuttered itself into silence at the very idea of stepping up to Maura and pulling her close, framing her face with her hands and doing the very thing she had stopped herself from thinking about a thousand times before. Taking a deep breath, Jane scrubbed her hands over her face. 

She had to be able to think about it first, right? She couldn’t barge in with no idea what she was going to do, whether she had been living her life by that very philosophy for far too long or not. This was _Maura_, for God’s sake. She couldn’t mess this up. She had to do it right.

But, if she stood out here for much longer, Maura was going to be able to hear her thinking through the solid wood in front of her. 

With one more fortifying breath, Jane stepped forward and fit her key into the doorknob, letting herself into the house like she had a thousand times before. Her keys landed merrily in the bowl, the noise causing Maura to turn in the kitchen and greet Jane with a bright smile. Warmth blossomed in her chest, and Jane decided that this was what coming home was supposed to feel like.

“You’re earlier than I expected,” Maura reached around behind herself and untied the apron Jane had only just noticed she was wearing. 

“Korsak decided he wanted the paperwork done right,” Jane shrugged one shoulder, dropping herself onto a stool at the counter.

“I can understand his concern,” a cold bottle found its way in front of Jane, “Though I’m sure you were doing a passable job.”

Jane snorted in disbelief, and reveled in the warm, teasing smile on Maura’s face. “I don’t know about that.” And this was where she would typically change the subject, crack a joke about the dinner Maura was making and -

Wait. Making? 

“I thought you were ordering in,” she said, quirking an eyebrow as a flush crept up Maura’s neck.

“I was going to,” Maura moved slowly around the island, coming to a stop at the stool next to Jane’s. “I didn’t think pizza was an appropriate dinner for tonight.” She reached out tentatively, like she was worried Jane might pull away despite their new unspoken agreement.

Jane took a long drink of her beer, mouth suddenly dry. Maura’s hand had landed innocently on her forearm, but Jane felt the weight of it like an anvil. Her mind flashed briefly to the Sox game and the turmoil of emotions she’d had - anticipation, fear, longing - and found the fear was gone, leaving only fluttering hope in its place. Suddenly the years of their friendship stretched out behind them felt like so much wasted time.

Maybe Franky was right. Maybe this had been right in front of her nose for so long, and she’d been blind. 

Her beer clunked heavily down onto the counter top, and she turned in her seat to face Maura head on. Knees bumped against Maura’s leg, and Jane felt thin fingers tighten against her arm. She felt more than heard Maura’s little intake of breath, and found herself focused solely on Maura’s slightly parted lips. 

Jane couldn’t tell who moved first, but it didn’t matter, because Maura’s lips were pressed against hers and it felt like everything was finally sliding into place. She felt Maura’s other hand hesitantly touch her jaw, and Jane reached out, her hands landing solidly on the gentle swell of Maura’s hips. She pulled the doctor in closer to her, and felt the little noise Maura made vibrate against her lips. It made her gasp, which Maura took as an invitation to deepen the kiss, sliding her hand into Jane’s hair and holding her tight.

Behind them, the pot Maura had left unattended started to bubble.

It wasn’t until it boiled over that they pulled apart, Jane blinking up at Maura in a pleasant daze. Maura smiled down at her, lips still slightly parted and eyes dark. “I have wanted to do that for so long,” Maura said, at the same time as Jane burst out with, “We could have been doing that for _years_.”

Maura let out a soft laugh, combing her fingers through Jane’s unruly curls. “We wouldn’t be who we are now if we’d been doing this for years,” her fingers trailed back down to Jane’s jaw, “And I rather like who we are.”

“I rather like that we’re a ‘we’.” Jane rumbled out, causing Maura to laugh again. 

The pot that had boiled over made a defeated hissing sound, and Maura pulled back with a quiet, “Oh, shoot!” which made Jane grin widely. She watched Maura scurry back around the island to tend to whatever it was that was definitely burning if the frown on Maura’s face was anything to judge by. “We’re going to have to order in after all.”

“It was worth it,” Jane decided, reaching into her back pocket for her phone. 

Maura smiled widely at her from over the mess of a stove, eyes soft. “You’ve always been worth it, Jane.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for bearing with me to this anticlimactic end. Maybe I'll revisit Jane and Maura some day.


End file.
